Step 7: Boxing and final touches

Step 8: Demonstration

We enjoyed very much this activity of our project. It was a way of applying technology to medical science and showing people their heart's electrical ...

That's right! This Instructable shows you how to build a device that enables you to do an electrocardiogram on yourself, your family or your friends! All you need is intermediate-level knowledge on electronics, access to Ye' Ol' Electronics Shoppe (or online shopping if preferred) and a laptop.

The device is composed of an amplifier/filter and a microprocessor unit, everything surrounded by a metallic box to avoid interferences.

Safety warning: DO NEVER use devices like this with a regular computer, as it is not isolated from the electrical power network. It may kill you in case of an electrical anomaly!

Information about the authors: we are students living in Portugal and we developed this device for our school project named Palpita-me! (Beat in me!, says the heart). With our project we intend to alert the school community and the general public to the importance of the prevention of cardiovascular diseases. We are studying issues such as the circulatory system, its anatomy, physiology and measurable parameters, relevant diagnostic techniques (especially electrocardiography), hospital services and emergency, telemedicine, statistics and risk factors.

Take good care of your heart so that it will beat inside you for many happy years to come!

As soon as the solder paste changes color into a bright, silver finishing (releasing a bit of smoke), you should carefully pull off the pcb and let it cool down. Also, in order to avoid overheating, you should use some metal bars close to the pcb edges as spacers so that the pcb remains always some 2 millimeters above the hot plate. This helps both to make the heating more uniform across the pcb and to avoid overheating, while providing a slot underneath the pcb for extraction: a metal ruler is inserted under the pcb and then lifted.

Is it possible to obtain the schematics and the pcb layout?? We cant access to your webpage and it´s too sad to loose this project. Thank you so much. If the builder doesn´t answer. Could anybody send to me those archives?

Great 'ible!!! My wife just got back from Haiti teaching their version of EMS the basics of CPR. She was frustrated because she couldn't teach coronary life support because the ems, AND THE FIELD HOSPITALS didn't have an ekg machine, portable or otherwise! While there is better out there...we'll try this out on the next trip with spare units until we can get something professional! Great job guys!

"DO NEVER use devices like this with a regular computer, as it is not isolated from the electrical power network."

Also do not interconnect the laptop with any *other* devices that are mains powered -- not the battery charger/power pack for the laptop, not to your stereo, or to phone lines, broadband, internal wired networks, external antennas etc. All of these introduce possible paths for hazard currents to flow through you.

Real ECG machines are fully isolated to many thousands of volts, so there is no hazard. Toy ones are battery operated and stand-alone. There is a reason for this!